


You Could Have It All, But Why Would You Want It?

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, I promise, John kisses a man, M/M, Meditation on regret disguised as a simple story about two dudes doing it, sort of drunk sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 23:26:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3227486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Constantine's taken everything else.  Let him have this, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Could Have It All, But Why Would You Want It?

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the Elliott Smith cover of Oasis' Supersonic. I am not associated with the production of Constantine, and this school is not associated with the production of Constantine. No one pays me to do this. Thank you, and good night.

Dead men tell no lies. Because death takes everything, sees everything, and leaves you able to conceal nothing. And this business, Chas is finally figuring out, isn't for living men; not for anyone who thinks that they can still keep something to themself. Now, he's dead- so many times over!- but John-  
Can a person be born dead? Alive, to every appearance, but just... not there? Not fully here, anyway, in the world? They used to say that the magician had one foot in the physical world, and one in the spiritual. Is that the case with John? For all that he's come to learn, Chas supposes that he'll never truly know this.  
He finds John at home, with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other. It's like a museum exhibit, a tableau. “Welcome back,” John says cheerily, then, with such casual alacrity that Chas wonders how much John had to drink before Chas discovered him: Zed is doing fine.  
“Wait- what?”  
“She's fine.” John waves a hand, over the drink he's begun pouring for himself. At a distance, it takes on the appearance of a blessing.  
Coming closer, Chas frowns. “What?”  
“Zed, er,” John takes a sip, then takes a longer drink, drains the glass, “did something she shouldn't have, but now, she's fine. She'll be fine.” John's strangely- Jesus, what is he- is he happy? He looks like he does when he's in the middle of a problem, and he knows what the answer is, but he hasn't yet found the right way to apply it. Vexed and satisfied.  
“What happened to her?” Chas asks slowly.  
“She- she tried to channel your daughter, when she was-” John's pouring another drink. He finishes, and takes a long swallow. Chas watches his throat move, the motion of quenching a real thirst. “In the other place. Did herself a mischief, but she's fine. She's going to be fine. We'll all be fine,” he adds quietly.  
“Is she all right?” Chas asks, then feels stupid.  
“Yeah,” John smiles, already falling into the booze, dropping down deep and then rising up to float, “She'll be okay. She's made of tempered steel, that one.”  
“Zed's strong,” Chas says, then adds, “She's lucky.” It's a pointless point, but Chas still has to make it. When you run with John Constantine, if you want to live, you need to be lucky.  
“So are you,” John says, picking up exactly where he has to, half compliment and half bait, “Strong.”  
Which Chas takes. “Because you made me that way,” he says, quieter than he wanted to, as free in John's drunkenness as John is.  
“Na,” snorts John, waves his hand, a second pass over his drink, “You were already strong. 'Lesser knights', and all of that. No. I didn't do anything, in that department.” Down goes that drink. “How's your little girl? How's- everything else?”  
John's soft, now- as soft as he gets. Still spiky, but spiky like a crab, jelly under the armor. There are things that Chas wants to say, but the words get snarled up in his throat, so all he gets out is, “Doing a lot better”, then, with greater ease, “Give me a drink.”  
“All right,” says John, soft and unsure, gets up and fumbles around until he finds a glass. He pours some for Chas and some more for himself. Less for Chas. Chas takes it all in one go, looking into John's eyes. Then John laughs, bubbling up from inside, tilts his head back, laughs again, says, “All right,” soft, still laughing. He pours another for Chas. Chas drinks again, holds out his glass; drinks again. They're about even, now. John pours them both another.  
“What were we talking about?” John asks, looks at Chas, his gaze losing its edge.  
“I don't remember. Zed.”  
“Yeah,” John rumbles, “She'll be all right. We can visit her tomorrow. Both of us.”  
“She'd like that.”  
“Yeah,” John says again, warmly, “Yeah.”  
“So, tomorrow,” says Chas, drinks and holds out his glass.  
John supplies. “Assuming we both make it to tomorrow.”  
“I'll take care of you,” Chas murmurs, without thinking.  
“Oh, you're going to take care of me?” John laughs, fills his glass again.  
“If I have to.”  
“'If you have to'. You love taking care of me, Chas. You live to take care of me,” John sniffs, chuckles to himself, sinks down into the collar of his shirt like a bird into its feathers. “You love it,” he says, from low in his throat.  
“I guess I must.” Chas takes the bottle, pours his own drink; empties the bottle, shakes it back and forth. “Whoops.”  
“I've got another one. Somewhere.” John goes in search of the other bottle, and Chas follows.  
“Here it is,” John says, pulling it down from a kitchen cabinet. Chas was behind him but when John turns around, Chas is facing him, close to him. “You want something?” John asks.  
“Do you?”  
“Don't play this game with me,” John says, then mutters, “I invented this game.”  
“If you invented it, tell me what comes next?”  
John shakes his head. “You're not ready.”  
He's not drunk. Not that drunk. He knows that he can still go back to where he started. But he's been going back for a long time: take a step, make a mistake, regret it, and walk back over it like it never happened. “The hell I'm not.” He takes the bottle from John, places it on the counter next to him, then takes John's hand in his, looks at it, moves his own down John's wrist, holds it up and then pins it down against the counter. Like he expected, John gasps. Low, but audibly. John gasps, and Chas presses his weight onto John's wrist, and leans against John, waits for him to move.  
“So, what comes next?” John asks, standing still against him, and Chas can feel himself falling into John's eyes, and his mouth, and the way he says 'comes', and he could stay here forever-  
He kisses John. He's done this before. Done this, and taken a step back. Now, though, he takes the step forward. He won't be able to walk away from this.  
“You're drunk,” says John, breathing heavily. He's been here before, too.  
“So are you.”  
“You've got a point,” John laughs.  
Chas laughs, too, touching John's face. “Yeah.”  
“Yeah.”  
And, now, John kisses him. Deeper and fuller and longer, and Chas could get out. He's always had a way out. He's always been given a way out. This is his way out.  
He is getting out, but the wrong way. He's going forward, going through, instead of backward. He lets John suck his tongue, moan showily, rub up against him, try to shock him, get it all out. Then, like a fever, it fades, and John stills, lets himself be moved. Chas moves him. Caresses his face, loosens his tie, still kissing him, slowly, softly. The moans have evaporated, and the sounds that John makes now are turbulent and dreamy, like those of someone troubled in their sleep.  
“Don't,” John breathes, and Chas stops, lets him go, takes a step back from him.  
“No,” John says, shaking his head, “No. I mean, don't do this if you think you're going to regret it.”  
“Oh. Right.”  
“Yeah.” John rubs his hand against the back of his head. “Don't do that to yourself.”  
“No.” Chas shakes his head, and comes close again. Leaning up into him, John kisses him, wraps Chas up in him. If Chas wanted, it could be a farewell. Once more, before they returned to their normal selves. After this, though, it's going to mean something. John's making that sound anew, breathless and surprised, and it's better than anything Chas has ever heard. It's the best thing he's ever heard, and he laughs to himself. He laughs at himself, and how he could have thought that this wouldn't happen, that he wouldn't end up here, eventually. It's like death. Death is coming for him. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But soon. And for the rest of his life. Until then.  
Until then, he pulls off John's tie, unbuttons his shirt. Kisses down his neck, and John starts, shudders, begs him not to stop. Why would he? The skin he tastes is familiar and alien, both, unknown to his tongue, but known to other parts of him. The parts of him that make this so easy, because it's already happened, in his mind, a thousand times before.  
“Tell me you haven't thought about this,” he says, to John, and to himself, both.  
“You know I have,” John says, stupid and drunk and desperate.  
“Your bed,” Chas breathes out, against John's collarbone. He takes off John's shirt.  
“Yes. Oh, God, yes.” John wriggles out from between Chas and the counter, lurches away, grabs Chas' wrist. “Please,” he says, looking back at Chas.  
“Yeah,” Chas says, lets himself be yanked forward, moves himself the rest of the way, “Yes.”  
Through corridors filled with magic trash, all of it bunching together, turning to static, to a wall, to the thickness of oblivion, to nothing all around him, Chas lets John pull him to his bedroom. The longer they walk, the darker it gets, until they're in the full darkness of John's room, where John sleeps, and Chas has been here before, but he's never thought about it before. What it's like to be in the place where John lays his head down at night, a place in the midst of all of this inhumanity that is purely human.  
He lays John down, on his bed. Takes off his own shirt, and the tee shirt underneath. Kisses John's mouth and his neck and his chest, and this is someplace that Chas has never been. It's dark, and that's good. If it's dark, it doesn't have to be real- that's what he tells himself, but in fact, it's more real- and, fuck, Chas is starting to pull himself out, starting to sober up, and it's not so easy anymore.  
Being drunk is sexy. This, whatever this is, this twilight between drunkenness and sobriety, isn't. It's making him think. What he's thinking, he isn't sure, all the thoughts tangling up, and he doesn't know what to do-  
He gets up, stumbles around for a few moments, and just as John's beginning to ask what he's doing, he finds a lamp and turns it on.  
“Fuck,” John hisses, covers his eyes with his hand.  
Chas looks at John. He could stop. He could still stop. Nothing's really happened. John would be annoyed, but John's always annoyed. He isn't happy unless he's not happy. It's okay. Nothing's changed. He can go back. Walk himself back to wherever he was. He can come back.  
Slowly, he takes away John's hand. John winces at the light, opens his eyes, leans up, kisses him. Unbuttoning John's pants, he kisses him right back. “Oh,” John says, the word, perfectly formed, like he's been given news he didn't expect. John moves, a twitch of his hips, and then, a long snake of motion, the bed complaining under him. Chas unzips his pants, and John frowns, that strange face he makes when he knows he's caught but doesn't know how it happened, and turns his head to the side, shows the line of his throat. Something seems to resolve itself, then, and he looks up at Chas, his expression unreadable. Finally- finally!- he grabs hold of Chas, pulls him in close, and holds him there for a long time. He presses up against Chas' hip, his thigh, moves one way, then another. His breath rushes in and out of him, and Chas knows the sound of living breath, like he knows the sound of dying. He presses his ear to John's chest, hears the heavy and fragile sounds within, feels the tide of respiration. Kisses John. Pulls his pants down past his hips. Touches him.  
It's nothing. Everyone does things like this. He moves his hand down and up, feels- he knows what he feels, but it's strange from this side. It's strange, and unsettling, and he's starting to not want to think about how much he likes it. That someone's lying here, under him, at his mercy, and it's a man, and it's John. Christ. It's John. Saying it to himself is a shock, and he feels something electric shudder through him, and it might not be something he should want, but he does want this.  
He kisses John, his hand in John's underwear. John digs his fingernails into his back, and Chas starts, looks at him, mouths, What?  
“I'm sorry,” John murmurs, “I got a bit carried away.”  
“It's all right.” He kisses John, tastes, now that the alcohol is losing its effect on him, the taste of whiskey on John, on his lips and his tongue, the inside of his mouth. He feels the roughness of John's cheeks, rubs his hands against them, lets his fingertips become abraded, overly-sensitized.  
“Take off your clothes,” he says, watches John think of fifty different witty replies, before dismissing them all and complying. Watches John as he takes off his own clothes, feels the cool air on his skin. He's not warm anymore. But John is.  
And John is so warm. He's soft in some places, but mostly, he's rough and jagged, like if a broken bottle were human, moving all of those edges against Chas. But Chas isn't afraid of sharp things, and he isn't afraid of getting hurt. He presses their bodies together, lets John dig in, lets him push up hard, and fall down heavy, until he's gotten it out of his system, and they can move with instead of against each other.  
Then, he kisses John. Everywhere. All of the old places, and all of the new places. He pushes John's legs up, runs his mouth over his hips and his thighs, hears him moan, hears him beg, before grasping his cock, kissing the tip, then taking it in as far as he can. As much as John feels it, he feels it, too. And it hurts, like inevitability, even though nothing feels inevitable: he might never come; he could remain like this forever, trapped. When his jaw aches, he uses his hand; breathes in deep, then goes down on John again, continues until John comes.  
John cries out- what could be his name, or could be anything, really- pulls Chas' hair, then grips the sheets, then lets his hands fall gently onto Chas' head.  
Chas swallows, moves up, kisses John's mouth, turns his head to the side, and kisses his jaw, sucks his earlobe; pushes his cock against John's hip.  
“Yeah,” John whispers, wraps his arms around Chas.  
After that, it's just feeling. Just the feeling of John's arms around him, and John's mouth on his, and the warmth of John's skin, damp with sweat, the peak of his hipbone and the slow descent of his thigh. He presses his face into John's shoulder, and John tugs his hair, makes him look up.  
“Look at me,” John says, not sounding drunk, at all, anymore.  
“What?” Chas laughs.  
“Look at me.”  
“All right.” He changes his position slightly, so that, now, he has to look. When that wearies him, he straddles John, takes his cock in his hand, touches himself as John's hands climb his thighs, roam across his hips. He's looking.  
And what does he see?  
For a moment, he closes his eyes, but he makes himself open them. Now, he can't not look. Now, John's hand is on him; he lets his own fall aside.  
People insist that an orgasm is like death. Chas knows that this is bullshit. Death isn't oblivion; it's eternity. And it's eternity, whether it's that of death or life, that Chas sees every second of every day. Eternity is crowded, heavy, crushing down on you, making you part of it. What he sees, now, though, in the moment that John gives him his release, is nothing. Cool, clear, clean nothing; washing over him, taking everything away.


End file.
